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This is a report of a solo-trip to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, undertaken during July/August 1994.

Turkmenistan

Pierre.Flener
2004-04-03 19:02:45

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two-week-visa to Uzbekistan ($50), bought a tourist visa ($30) from the friendly Turkmen consul in Ankara, and don't need any visa for Turkey. My first tourist-visa application for Iran had been rejected, without any motive, just like all other applications this summer from Turkey, indiscriminately of the nationalities of the applicants. On the sympathetic Iranian consul's suggestion (after I personally appealed to him and described him my project, which would have to be changed without the help of Tehran), I wrote an emotional appeal to the Tehran authorities, and he added a personal letter of recommendation, but we didn't have an answer when I left for Uzbekistan. But he said he'd telex the answer to Ashkhabad, in case it is positive. In any case, he said, Iranian consuls have the right to deliver transit visas to European Union citizens, on the spot, without consulting with Tehran first. Clarification: transit-visas must be obtained from the embassy of the starting country of the transit (Turkmenistan, in my case), so he couldn't write me one in advance. He also solemnly assured me, just like his Turkmen colleague, that the border from Ashkhabad to Mashhad was no longer closed to foreigners, as otherwise I wouldn't even have embarked on this project. Iranian transit visas being known to be sort-of easy to extend once in Iran, I left Ankara in complete confidence about the feasibility of my itinerary.

At the Iranian Embassy in Ashkhabad, things start out funnily. A clerk rips off a page from a calendar and asks me to write my request on it, or wherever there is free space on it, so that he carry it over to the consul. So I identify myself, and ask about my tourist visa, mentioning that my application was filed from Ankara. Minutes later, the slip of paper comes back: "I'm sorry, I cannot give you a tourist visa." Guessing that my second application was rejected, despite the glorious prose of my appeal and ...